“We’re going in, then, if you please.”
The wolf finally looked at them – judgmentally – then cracked the seal on the door and opened it on its squealing hinges.
Nameless looked a little bigger when it was empty. Only the human bounty hunter occupied his usual booth; the bartender, Carey, stood slouched on his elbows, playing with his phone. The usual blue neon slicked everything in a sickly glow.
“Wow,” Jamie said, deadpan, “what a nice place you brought me to.”
“Shut up.” He went to the bar, and Jamie followed. What else could he do?
Once they’d pulled out stools, and climbed onto them, Carey the wolf finally lifted his head, gaze disinterested. He smelled of wariness, though.
“You,” he said flatly.
“Yes, me,” Alexei said. “I’ve brought a friend. Is your master here?”
“No.”
“Do you know when he’ll be in?”
“No.”
“You’re his Familiar.”
Carey stared at him a moment, expression bored – still giving off anxiety. “Do you want vodka?”
Alexei sighed. “Yes.”
“I don’t want vodka,” Jamie hissed when Carey turned to pour their drinks. “It’s ten in the morning.”
“One vodka won’t get you drunk,” Alexei said, accepting the two glasses as they thumped down in front of him. “It’s good for you. Here. Drink up.”
He threw his own down and motioned for another.
Jamie sipped at his with a shudder.
“I have to get a new bottle,” Carey said, and went out from behind the bar and through a Staff Only door that must have led into a storeroom.
Jamie said, “Lex, what are we doing here?”
If these silly twenty-first century children were going to insist on a nickname, he supposed Lex was better than the dreaded Alex.
“Hey,” Jamie prompted, when Alexei only stared down into his empty glass.
“I come in here sometimes,” he finally said. “It’s an immortal bar.”
“An immortal dive. And yeah, I can smell that. But why?”
He shrugged. Older though he might have been, he felt young, suddenly. Perhaps foolish. Perhaps more than a little resentful, even rebellious. “It’s nice. Being around others like us.”
Jamie executed a slow turn on his stool. “There’s no one in here.”
“You know what I mean,” Alexei snapped. “Being around immortals who don’t think our own kind are awful.”
Silence a beat. “You’re talking about Nik,” Jamie said, his voice low, and flat. Disbelieving.
Where the hell was Carey with the new bottle? “Christ, he isn’t God,” Alexei said, spinning his empty glass in little circles. “You can say something bad about him and the world won’t end. Yes, I’m talking about Nik.”
Another pause. “I never said he was God,” Jamie said, with infuriating calm. “Why are you so worked up about this, anyway? Why now?”
Before Alexei could respond – and a good thing, too, because he wasn’t sure how to put his feelings into words yet – Carey returned, unhurried, cracking the cap on a fresh bottle of Smirnoff. “Talked to Gustav,” he said, still disinterested, as he refilled Alexei’s glass.
Beside him, Jamie went very still. And then said, “Gustav?”
Carey’s brows lifted the slightest fraction.
Alexei tossed back the vodka and slid to his feet. “On second thought, we’ll come back again another time.”
“Did you say–” Jamie started, but Alexei grabbed him, pulled him off his stool – “Hey!” – and dragged him to the door.
It paid to be stronger, sometimes.
A lot of the time.
When they were back out on the sidewalk, amid the brightness of sun, which they squinted against, and the barrage of sounds and scents and whirling colors, early autumn wind snatching on their clothes, Jamie shook loose and rounded on him. But not, as Alexei had expected, with fury. With a wide-eyed startlement instead.
“This guy Gustav we’re looking for. You know him?”
“I’ve met him,” Alexei hedged. “That’s his bar.”
“And you didn’t say anything at breakfast?”
“Why? So Nikita could kill him?”
Jamie opened his mouth to respond…and then closed it.
Pedestrians streamed past on either side of them; a man elbowed Jamie with a quick, vicious “get the fuck outta the way.”
“Alexei,” Jamie finally said, his gaze the most serious Alexei had ever seen it. “Someone killed and ate a part of a man. And Nik and Sasha say this Gustav guy is involved. Please don’t tell me you don’t see anything wrong with that.”
“If you tell them–”
“Threatening me? Classy.”
Alexei ground his molars. “I want to figure out what’s going on first. Something is happening, yes, but if Nik finds Gustav first, he’ll only kill. He never cares about the why.”
“I don’t think you’re giving him enough credit.”
“And I’m warning you.”
Jamie stared at him, still not frightened, only disappointed, which was worse, in a way. Then he sighed, shook his head, and turned away.
Whatever, Alexei thought with an inward snarl, and set off in the opposite direction.
But, if he’d been able to admit it then, he would have recoiled from his own aggression. He was very angry, and not completely sure why, and this was one of those moments when he wondered if Grisha’s siring of him had left him with such a taint…
Or if it had been there all along.
8
1995
Sasha tipped his head back against the cold bricks and stared up at the light-polluted sky that spanned the building tops above. He exhaled a plume of billowing steam, and watched it disperse in loops and curls. The bar – whose outer wall he leaned against now – would close soon. But there was still time. Time enough for the blond sipping gin and making eyes at Nik all night to crook her finger and invite him back to the bathrooms.
Sasha had had only one drink, but his stomach rolled.
“Lovely night,” a lightly accented voice said off to his right, and he startled, turning, growl ready in his throat.
But he calmed at once. He knew that voice. And there was no scent. Because the man who’d materialized beside him, long golden braid draped over one shoulder, sable cloak clasped beneath his chin, wasn’t really here. But was Sasha’s friend nevertheless.
“Oh. Val. Hi.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to frighten you,” Val said, flashing him a sharp, charming smile.
“It’s fine.” Sasha resettled, one foot propped back on the wall, letting his shoulders slump. “I’m just…waiting.”
“For Nikita.”
“Heh. Good guess.”
“Darling, you only ever wait for one person.”
Sasha stared at the opposite wall of the alley, its peeling band posters and messy, indecipherable graffiti.
“Lovely evening,” Val said again, “but a rather…unlovely alley, don’t you think?” A glance proved he was surveying it with flared nostrils and downturned mouth. “And I can’t even smell it.”
“It smells like piss,” Sasha informed him.
“I thought so.” A pause, in which Sasha went back to staring at the posters. In a delicate tone, Val said, “But why are you waiting on him tonight, dear?”
Sasha’s throat tightened; his stomach clenched. Because he wanted to fuck someone, he thought, gorge rising, and couldn’t say the words. They sounded crass and unfair in his own mind. “He, um.” He gestured over his shoulder, a limp sort of flapping gesture, as his pulse pounded in his ears. “Met…someone.”
“Ah,” Val said, far too knowingly. “A lovely lady, I suppose.”
Sasha swallowed with difficulty. “Yeah.”
“And this of course sits ill with you.”
“What?” Sasha turned his head – too sharply, he could feel it. A snap r
esponse. He fought to keep from frowning. “No. No, it…he worries too much. It’s good for him to…relax.”
“Relax, yes.” Val chuckled…but his smile slipped quickly, and his blue eyes were full of sympathy. He tipped his head back against the wall, the long, pale line of his throat exposed. “Oh, Sasha. Why won’t you just tell him?”
The back of his neck prickled. “Tell him what?”
Val leaned in close, very close. Sasha imagined he could feel the heat of his breath, but that was only…anticipation. “Sasha,” Val said, and his voice deepened, and his fangs grew long, and his eyes flashed. He tipped his face, so he could whisper right in Sasha’s ear. “Why won’t you tell him that you wish it was you he was fucking right now?”
Sasha made a shocked, choked sound, and Val disappeared with a thin curl of white smoke.
~*~
Present Day
They spent the better part of the day combing the city – what they could reach of it on foot. They went along mostly in silence. Partly because after seventy-seven years living with someone, living literally out of one another’s pockets, silences didn’t always need filling. But Sasha felt, was keenly aware, of an underlying tension, the one that had blossomed first thing this morning, the moment he opened his eyes and felt Nik’s arm lying heavy in the dip of his waist.
But unlike the tension that had haunted their apartment since returning from Virginia, this tension electrified him.
They walked close together. He wasn’t obvious about it, but Nik stole looks. Furtive little glimpses through his lashes, unconsciously enticing. His heartbeat kept skipping, quick jumps when Sasha was close enough to detect them.
Sasha kept tamping down smiles. Really? he wanted to say. You, too? Do you really?
But he knew. He could sense that the simmer of excitement in his belly tickled at Nik’s ribs, too.
They caught a few vampire scent trails, even followed them, but they weren’t Gustav, and they dead-ended.
Finally, when the shadows lay long across the sidewalks, and Sasha was about to vibrate out of his skin with anticipation, Nik turned to him, cocked a single brow, and said, “Dinner?”
Sasha let his grin break through; it hurt to hold it in any longer. “Wait. Are you offering to eat?”
The corner of Nikita’s mouth twitched; holding his own smile in check with difficulty. “If you’re not hungry–”
“I want Berger’s,” Sasha said. “Subs. With the vinegar chips.”
Nikita nodded, mouth still twitching. Voice mellow when he said, “Alright. We can do that.”
Sasha beamed.
“Are you going to smile like that the whole way home?”
“Try and stop me.”
“No.” Nikita’s smile finally appeared, smaller and softer than expected, quiet and fond. “I like it when you’re happy.”
His pulse skipped and skittered like a new spring colt.
It was a short walk to Berger’s, and they walked beside one another the whole way, even when it didn’t make sense, even when pedestrians had to veer around them. They broke apart to go around a light pole at one point, and when they veered back together, Nikita caught Sasha’s elbow with two fingers. A gentle touch, towing him back in, close enough the backs of their hands touched. He stared ahead the whole way, but Sasha could see the way the pulse beat rabbit-fast in the side of his throat.
Later, Nik had said that morning. And later lay just ahead now, getting ever closer as they waited in line, and traded money for fat sandwiches and vinegar-soaked, hand-cut chips.
Later chased them all the way home, and up the steps. It fueled the adrenaline pumping through Sasha’s veins until he had to clench his teeth to keep them from chattering. He couldn’t decide if he was eager, or nervous; probably both.
All his wondering and hoping, his amorphous, adolescent yearning that had become a clear and sharp-edged want, and now, here at last…
Nikita paused, their bag of food in one arm, his hand on the key in the deadbolt. He opened his mouth and took a breath through it, gaze pinned on the door. “Sasha,” he said, and all the amused lightness from earlier had bled into a heavy tone.
The bottom dropped out of Sasha’s stomach. “Please,” he whispered.
Nikita turned the key and let them in, going straight to the kitchen to set the bag down while Sasha, hands shaking, shut and relocked the door. “We have to talk, Sasha.” He shrugged out of his jacket and laid it over the counter, revealing shoulders drawn up high and tight with stress. “We need to. It’s important.”
Sasha wanted to scream. He bit his lip instead, his fangs growing too long in his mouth, and tasted blood. “Talk,” he said, surprised by the anger in his voice. He felt – felt attacked. To have spent all day with later beating like a second heartbeat behind his ribs, and then…to talk. “If it’s so important, why haven’t we ‘talked’ about this, I don’t know, at any point in the last seventy-seven years?”
Nikita sighed. He turned around, frowning, brows drawn together with unhappiness. Braced his hands back against the counter. “That’s exactly why we need to talk. Because we haven’t before – not about this.”
“I don’t want to,” Sasha said around the lump in his throat, not caring if he sounded petulant. Inside, his wolf was howling. He didn’t want words; he wanted kisses, and warm hands, and reassuring embraces.
Nikita sighed again. “We have to–”
“Bratishka.”
Nik’s frown deepened.
“That’s what you call me. Am I a brother to you?” He dreaded the answer.
Nikita stared at him a long, unblinking moment, his chin tipped down so that his face looked narrower and sharper than normal. His nostrils flared. “No.”
“For how long?”
“For how long what?”
“How long have you not seen me as a brother?”
Nik didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. He did blink, at least. As the tension stretched tight as fraying rope. Then: “Never.”
If there wasn’t a saying about finally hearing what you wanted, and not being able to believe it, there should have been. Sasha closed his eyes, and felt the wet heat of threatening tears. “Don’t…” His breath came out in quick stutters.
“Sashka–” He heard Nik take a step forward.
He held up a hand to stop him. “No. You said – you said you like it when I’m happy. Don’t say those things now just to make me happy. Not if you don’t mean them. I can’t – I can’t take that. If you want to talk, make it fast.”
Nik came forward anyway, and two hands closed around Sasha’s own hand, the texture of the skin the most familiar thing in his whole long life.
“Sasha. Look at me. Please.”
When Sasha opened his eyes, his best friend’s face was etched with heartbreak. His eyes shone unnaturally, bright flares like a gas stove.
His voice cracked. “I’m not saying it just to make you happy. If it does, that’s just a wonderful bonus.”
Sasha stared at him.
Nik let go of his hand – only to reach up and cup his face with both hands, delicately, like he held something precious. He was shaking, but his gaze didn’t waver. “I have wanted you since Ivan dragged you into your mother’s kitchen by the scruff of your neck.”
Sasha gasped.
“I have loved you since you looked up at me from that awful metal table, where I let them–” He gritted his teeth, and fought off a hard shiver. “Where I let them hurt you. And I’ve been very stupid, for a very long time, for not telling you before now.”
It was an effort to swallow; to make his throat work. “Why – why didn’t you?”
Nikita tipped forward, until their foreheads were pressed together, like this morning. “Because it was 1942. And it was Russia. And I was afraid,” he admitted, brokenly. “And I didn’t know if you…” He trailed off, the fear evident in his voice.
Sasha reached for him, then; took two tight handfuls of his shirt and pulled him in even closer
. “I do. I have.”
They breathed a moment, ragged and open-mouthed.
“Katya,” Sasha said.
Nikita made a low sound in his throat.
“You loved her.”
“I did. But you are my whole heart.”
The words swept over him, a revelation. His grip tightened; Sasha felt his blunt human nails sharpen to the beginnings of claws, pricking through Nik’s shirt.
“I love you so much, my Sashka.” Nik pulled back, just far enough that their gazes could meet; eyes still glowing, tips of his fangs showing, breath warm over Sasha’s face. He vibrated with intensity. “I’m in love with you.” And it wasn’t just hunger and earnest love shining in his eyes, but fear, too. He was terrified; quivering with it. Afraid, now that he’d stripped himself bare, that Sasha might not feel the same.
Me too, me too, Sasha wanted to tell him. So full of doubt and fear, dogged by the prejudices of the last century, terrified to risk damaging the most important thing he had. I love you. I’m in love with you. I’ve wanted to say it so long…
But he didn’t have words at the moment, the wolf pressed right up close to his skin, glad and howling. So he slipped his arms around Nikita, hugged him tight, chest-to-chest, and pressed his face into his neck with a low whine. He wanted…so much…but right now, all he wanted was to hold and be held.
Nik hugged him back, warm, uneven breath rustling through his hair.
They stood like that for a long moment, until Sasha felt both their heartbeats slow. The adrenaline rush of the admission faded – but in a good way. They were still them, still close; still the most important being in one another’s lives. There had always been love.
You’re my whole heart changed things. Wonderfully. Sasha could have burst with happiness. But he didn’t feel frantic anymore. Didn’t want to grip and hold and plead. This, now, simple touch, was enough.
Nik took a deep breath, his chest swelling against Sasha’s. “I still want to talk.”
Sasha chuckled. “You never want to talk, ever, and now you tell me that, and we have to talk instead of kiss.” He was only partly teasing.
Golden Eagle (Sons of Rome Book 4) Page 7
